Textbooks Are Wrong: Appendix Is Not A Vestigial Organ

The school science textbooks teach that Appendix is a vestigial organ in human beings just like wisdom teeth and tail bone. Evolutionary scientists at Midwestern University traced back the evolutionary history of appendix, which indicates that the organ is not vestigial. Instead, they have specified anatomical and physiological functions inside the body.

The researchers studied several ancestral mammalian lineages and the presence and absence of appendix in them indicated that appendix evolved 29 times in the last 11 million years, Science Alert reported.

"This statistically strong evidence that the appearance of the appendix is significantly more probable than its loss suggests a selective value for this structure," the team of scientists proposed.

Though the exact function of the organ is still unclear, it is proposed that the human body is not ready to give up the organ yet. "Thus, we can confidently reject the hypothesis that the appendix is a vestigial structure with little adaptive value or function among mammals," scientists say.

Textbook knowledge states that the human appendix is the result of evolutionary non-use of the organ for over millions of years. Scientists propose that the reason appendix still exists in the human body, even after causing life threatening conditions due to inflammation and rupturing, is because it is too "evolutionarily expensive" to be eliminated.

The study revealed that the appendix has a close relationship with concentration of lymphoid tissue in the cecum, which implies that the organ may be functioning as a secondary immune organ and as a "safe house" for beneficial gut bacteria, Irish Examiner reported.

The findings of the study were published in the Comptes Rendus Palevol journal. The article states that, "While these links between the appendix and cecal factors have been suggested before, this is the first time they have been statistically validated."

It seems biology textbooks will soon be edited and the next generation will know appendix not as a vestigial organ but as an evolutionary conserved secondary immune organ.